Howard Owens blogs off Jeff Jarvis, who has in turn blogged off Mark Potts to observe that news content has always been free:

Newspaper subscribers have never paid for content. They have paid for delivery.

These days, I read thousands of words a content every day. I pay for all of it. But I don’t pay the producers or publishers. I pay my computer maker and my broadband provider. I pay for delivery.

Nice point, but what to make of this nugget from Jeff vonKaenel:

The dailies all have Web sites that feature their news and even more than runs in the paper, but these sites aren’t moneymakers. They only provide about 5 percent to 8 percent of the money needed to publish a newspaper.

Newspapers are expensive to run – newsprint, printing and distribution alone comprise at least 25 percent of the total cost. An advertising sales staff costs at least another 25 percent. And there are a bunch of other expenses [35-40%?]. But the most important part of a newspaper – the newsroom – represents only about 10 percent to 15 percent of the total cost of publishing.

So where do I come down on the content argument? Ask yourself this question – who pays for your blog? My wife’s answer would be – my family, in lost leisure time. What would yours be? The content I create is for a specialist audience – myself. Most of it would hardly be worth monetizing, so free is fine.

I rely on other people who think aloud online to make similar calculations. The best of this content is no better or worse than content that needs subscribers or advertisers to pay for someone to produce it.

However, increasingly senior execs and professionals are recognising that its important to have something to communicate online, and so the cost of their communicating is de facto becoming part of what my HR chum calls their ‘reward.’ And that, oddly enough, is why journalism has a future.